Working Draft for Slums and Suburbs
I. Morning
The sun is always sober,
tearing through cement and glass,
vamping intentions, calculations…
Our mirrors wait, warnings
of complexion, fault, and past.
Awake, some of us would pray.
And some wished they could, just
like before, children, seeing Angels.
It’s morning: a city reaching for life.
II. Streets
Now we brace the streets:
cut-apart districts, skin tones of steel;
and our bodies, our wires, screens,
they bring no comfort. For youth,
only the music understands,
rattling the car frames.
But the old keep dreams too:
once, they too, sketched heavens,
once, they too, built beauty.
III. Here
The streets give it all.
Here, some purse was plucked.
Here, some Christian boy kissed
some Muslim girl, piercing a heaven
whether Christian or not. And
here, some Russian trudges void,
only lugging mem’ries of Name.
Faces lapse, our calculations
of faces…of faces…of faces…
IV. Evening
The veiled evening tempts.
Souls pull from formulas
and only dimness takes us in.
Night clubs turned to churches.
Others roamed flesh by flesh,
their souls towers above race—
or, sat at home dreaming of space.
Somehow, our life constantly bends,
and at the ends, flow sex or death.
V. In Our City
The night finds us: some in dorms,
tiny porches, re-piecing our city,
mouthing whether they “should,”
or “should not,” like those
unlike them; or, if man “can,”
or “cannot,” kill without guilt,
knowing, as their thoughts writhe,
someone “had to” and cleans blood.
In our city. It happened.
VI. Nighttime
But strangers is just a word;
in nighttime, faces merge.
They will all be seen again.
Now, our thinkers sink into pillows,
our intentions rest beside the lamp,
already dim. And, our complexions,
our faults, they sink too.
While the Angels, real or unreal,
prescribe an option like none other.
© 2009 Constantine Kulakov
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